Choose Your Own Adventure - pt I

You were told to make your way to the end of the corridor, which is a hard direction to misinterpret. Maybe you’re at the wrong hospital. Maybe it’s someone else’s child. Maybe it was all a dream - are you still dreaming? Can you smell in dreams and feel your feet striking the old linoleum with each hurried step, can a corridor feel warm and claustrophobic in a dream? Would you need to sit down more than anything in a dream? Maybe it’s cooler behind one of these doors with the portholes, windows into variations of misery: gastroenterology, oncology, urology, burns ampersand trauma. You feel so warm you can hear the whoosh of your pulse. No chairs to sit down anywhere. You feel an overwhelming urge to vomit, clinging to the unique relief of pressure and warmth you’d feel if you just let it all go now. Just let it go.

You’re not cut out for this task, deep down you just know it. The sodden qualities of your shirt armpits and the rising damp in the hair at the small of your back belie how much difficulty you’re having in even walking along a straight line. You keep telling yourself you have to be strong for them, for your family. Do you have to be strong for as long as it takes to get to the end of this corridor, or will you have to keep it up for another few pages? The corridor stretches endlessly like some sort of Lovecraftian device. You check your phone and it’s been only two minutes since you walked into the building. You swear you just passed that stairwell. You press onwards, swallowing back thick acid spit. please be strong you repeat over and over as one foot goes in front of the other. 

The end approaches and you spot an open door with April sat inside as pale as the walls around her. A man holds the door open and watches your approach with sadness and trepidation.